What's that rumbling sound emanating from West 44th Street? Is it an
audience going wild over the latest Main Stem hit? Is it two African
swallows furiously beating their wings in an attempt to transport a coconut?
Or is it the musical theatre art form being crushed under the unsupportable
weight of an industry that doesn't care what it puts on?

The answer: all of the above. Spamalot, which just opened at the Shubert,
is additional evidence (if more is needed) that producers and creative teams
no longer need to expend thought, care, or sense to have a smash hit. If
the show is based on a famous (or even infamous) movie with a huge built-in
fan base, bring it to Broadway and take the profits to the bank.

The latest film receiving this treatment is the 1975 cult favorite, Monty
Python and the Holy Grail. In it, the esteemed British comedy group Monty
Python, which helped launch the impressive careers of John Cleese and Eric
Idle, ostensibly took on Arthurian legend (King Arthur, Lancelot, Galahad,
and a host of others make appearances), but subsumed the plot as necessary
to pursue pure, unadulterated comedy. Since that comedy ranged from the
subtle to the outrageous and from the absurd to the just plain silly, most
Python devotees wouldn't have it any other way.

With Spamalot, they won't have to. Idle - billed as the show's librettist,
lyricist, and co-composer - has created such a faithful translation of the
film that no one has to worry about being assaulted by any fresh comic
ideas. There's some new material - Idle has come up with a few new scenes
and songs (with composer John Du Prez) - but this show isn't about that.
It's about the rush of recognition and laughter that sweeps over the house
when familiar cue lines are heard for a wild French taunting scene or a
confrontation with the Knights Who Say "Ni."

That makes this not a show like Mamma Mia! or Good Vibrations where you walk
in humming the tunes; here, you walk in reciting the jokes. And if your
idea of a musical is nothing more than seeing scenes and jokes you already
know by heart being acted out onstage, then you'll undoubtedly love Spamalot
to the high heavens, and overlook the unnecessary and negligible
ornamentations that Idle and Du Prez have provided.

But if you think a musical should be more than that, you're out of luck.
This is not Hairspray or The Producers, two shows adapted from comedy movies
that brim with true theatrical life onstage, and are fine examples of
contemporary musical theatre craft. Even the recent (if misguided) Dirty
Rotten Scoundrels gives its source material a jolt in a way that never
happens here. Director Mike Nichols, music arranger Glen Kelly (who helped
fashion Mel Brooks's tunes for The Producers into a worthy stage score), and
choreographer Casey Nicholaw are content with doing work that's sometimes
underpowered and sometimes overly manic, but is always uninspired.

Why not rest on their laurels? The show sells itself, and likely would even
without a starry cast led by Tim Curry, Hank Azaria, and David Hyde Pierce.
Still, most of what's here feels particularly obligatory: When Arthur
(Curry) and his knights arrive in Camelot, the resulting scene and song are
only a blandly glitzy Las Vegas floor show. Lancelot confronts his
sexuality in a flashy number blending Barry Manilow and The Boy From Oz.
Arthur sings a plaintive ballad called "I'm All Alone" while his servant
Patsy (Michael McGrath) stands mere feet away.

Even more indicative of the show is "The Song That Goes Like This," a duet
for Sir Galahad (Christopher Sieber) and The Lady of the Lake (Sara
Ramirez), in which they stand on a Phantom of the Opera-like boat while an
ornate chandelier careens above their heads. The song doesn't parody belty
Andrew Lloyd Webber power ballads as much as it points up Idle and Du Prez's
inability to wring much humor from targets over a decade out of date.

Do they not know how to extend Pythonesque humor to song length? What else
could explain a two-minute number called "I Am Not Dead Yet" that fizzles
after 15 seconds? The more American humor plays better: The show's primary
highlight is "You Won't Succeed on Broadway," sung when the knights learn
they'll have to put on a musical to find the Grail (don't ask); it takes a
series of amusing if predictable shots at Jewish contributions to the
theatre, complete with klezmer music and a bottle dance with grails. (It's
telling, if unsurprising, that the score's only memorable song is "Always
Look on the Bright Side of Life," interpolated from the Python film Life of
Brian, and used here to kick off the second act and for an unduly
entertaining post-curtain call sing-along.)

Of the performers, Christian Borle receives well-deserved laughs as an
exposition-spewing historian, but practically everyone else walks through
their roles. (The men in Altar Boyz make a far more entertaining group of
religious crusaders.) Also inexplicably lost is rising star Ramirez, a
scintillating comic highlight of 2001's A Class Act now relegated to
half-baked impressions of Celine Dion and Liza Minnelli. Her big solo, the
unfunny "The Diva's Lament" in the second act, finds her complaining that
she has nothing good to do in the show. I share in that sorrow.

At least there's some solace to be found in Cleese's voiceover as God, who
assigns the Grail quest to Arthur and his knights. His contribution, while
brief, is invigorating, a reminder of the biting humor and originality
present in the original film, but absent in this forced, fabricated
treatment.

Of course, Monty Python fans will be in hysterics when they hear the words
"Bring out your dead" accompanied by the sight of a truck stacked with
presumed corpses. Lovers of Broadway musicals must be forgiven for not
joining in their revelry; they're likely only to see their once cherished
art form rotting on the cart.